Astos has been taken out! Crystal in hand, we run back to Elfland for a quick heal before heading back to the area near the original bridge, to the witch's cave.

Motoya is in her cave, accompanied by her magical roomba brooms, constantly cleaning. It's a great idea, but she seems to need many to keep her place clean. I hand her the crystal, and giddy with pleasure, she gives me some herb in return. Finally!

We return to Elfland with our newly acquired herb and hand it to the prince, who wakes from the sweet, herbaceous scents. The prince is so thankful for our service that he gives us a mystical key! He promises that this key can open any chest in the realm if we so desire.

We decide to give it a try in Elfland's treasure reserves, and sure enough, the chests open, and we are entreated to some meager gold and some worthless weapons and armor.

Remembering that Astos also had a cache of chests that we could not open, we head back to his castle. Once there, we fend off some guardian mummies and open those chests as well. Again, some worthless weapons and armor, but we realize that these mummies are magical. Every time we move in front of the chests, more mummies appear as if from nowhere! This is an interesting feat that Astos somehow pulled off; we definitely feel more experienced from his attempts to guard the chests.

Next, we head back to our starting area, remembering that there are chests to... explore! Again, there is not much use here except there is TNT! That should be fun to use!

We go to the last remaining port we have yet to explore on this sea and stumble upon a cave full of dwarves. I am inclined to call it Dwarfland. Lucky for me, they needed TNT to create a canal between the sea and the greater ocean. This should help trade greatly, so I happily hand over the TNT to this lil' guy. They also have many chests to explore here as well and happily take a house, money, and other supplies as payment for our part in the construction of the canal.

Opening the canal for trade also means we can move freely into the world using our little ship. All is looking good in the world with Astos now defeated and a brand new canal built. I feel like we have sufficiently done a great job to make the world a better place.

We get into our ship and head west through the canal. In almost no time, we find another small town named Melmond. This town looks to have seen better days. The sidewalks are partially torn up, and a building has been destroyed! After talking to some villagers, it appears that a Vampire has been regularly coming from the earthen cave to the south and attacking the villagers. When it seemed like we had made a dent in the evils of the world, another should appear so quickly! What are the chances?!?

We took little time to find the cave in the south, and we entered trepidly. After a few encounters, we note that the monsters here offer almost no challenge to us. Still, there are bats everywhere hindering our way! Swatting bats, we ignore all chests that may distract us from our attempts to save the town of Melmond and swiftly find ourselves upon the Vampire.

The vampire looks pretty intimidating. We smack him in the face with each hero, and he goes down like a sniveling child, dropping a beautiful red ruby on the ground. We pick it up and explore his lair, but we find nothing but a large metal plate on the ground, clearly covering something up. We try to move it but are foiled by the attempt and decide to head back to town to share our victory with the village folk!

Today's XP totals are:

Runecrafting: 1; Aurum: 1; Dominus: 1; Glyphus: 1; Iteron: 1; Dracorius: 1